IRS can continue to share taxpayer data with ICE, court says

Dealings and data-sharing practices with ICE and other law enforcement agencies have become a flash point for companies.That’s just as true at the IRS.

Last week, a federal appeals court in Washington, DC, denied a request from an immigrant rights group to temporarily block the IRS from sharing taxpayer data, including names and addresses, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), making it easier to locate and deport individuals.

A three-judge panel said the groups suing the federal government over the agreement—Centro de Trabajadores Unidos, Immigrant Solidarity DuPage, and other nonprofits—were “unlikely to succeed on the merits of their claim,” adding that the appellants failed to meet the “heavy burden” of demonstrating a need for “preliminary injunctive relief.”

Elsewhere in the ruling, the judges stated that Section 1603 of federal tax code, which “generally prohibits the release of tax information by an IRS employee,” doesn’t classify names and addresses as “taxpayer return information, so they do not receive any special protection from disclosure.”

“The simple and dispositive point here is that [Section 1603] authorizes [the] IRS to disclose address information, to specific government officials, for use in nontax criminal investigations, and only in response to a valid request,” the judges wrote.

Last April, the Treasury Department and Department of Homeland Security reached a controversial data-sharing agreement, which allowed ICE to request the names of addresses of individuals who might lack legal status to live in the US.

Following the agreement, former acting IRS commissioner Melanie Krause resigned from her post.

Earlier in February, court filings revealed the IRS had mistakenly shared taxpayer information of thousands of people with the DHS. ICE had requested 1.28 million names, only 47,000 of which the IRS was able to verify. “For less than 5% of those individuals, the IRS gave ICE additional address information, potentially violating privacy rules created to protect taxpayer data,” according to the Associated Press.